Reaching out to young people in order to inform them of the wide range of risks associated with online activity has been something schools and parents have been doing for a long time.
SpeakOut! is a new app development from the UK based CyberTrust designed to portray these risks in such a way that they can see the consequences of the decisions they make. The app is in its early stages of development but but the first version of the app is now available and the Google and Apple stores ready for download.
The app was developed by The CyberTrust, a UK based charity and The University of Gloucester targeted at the 10 to 14 age range and is in the form of a dialogue between the user and another character in each storyline.
Although it is in its early days the approach appears to be attractive to young people and users are invited to feedback on the app functions and potential topics if they have an idea to put forward.
You can use the comment form at the foot of this post if you have any useful suggestions or observations.
Please do not post criticisms as they does not help us support potential targets of cyber attacks.
Technology alone cannot deliver outstanding schools, people do that. However, if you put technology in the hands of creative risk takers, whether they are teachers or the school leadership team then it can have a major impact on the delivery of the curriculum, the engagement of learners and parents and the effectiveness of a school.
It really is not about finding the killer application or the right bit of content, its about a blend of the different factors that come together to creating stimulating and challenging learning environments.
In the years I have been supporting schools, too long to admit to, I have seen huge impact in situations where the teacher has limited resources but a creative spark that converts the mundane into a vibrant classroom. I have also seen thousands of UK pounds spent on a product or service that someone deems to be the ‘must have’ service or application only to find that after a while its use and impact withers and eventually is forgotten.
In the years I have been supporting schools, too long to admit to, I have seen huge impact in situations where the teacher has limited resources but a creative spark that converts the mundane into a vibrant classroom. I have also seen thousands of UK pounds spent on a product or service that someone deems to be the ‘must have’ service or application only to find that after a while its use and impact withers and eventually is forgotten.
All of this would suggest that the most significant factor in the adoption of technology in a school is the willingness of staff and pupils to make use of it. The strategy for change management is much more important that the technology itself as the latter is easily obtained and the former is often largely ignored or left to an individual in a school to deliver.
So what do you need for successful ICT implementation across a school?
Firstly a leadership team and headteacher who encourage innovation. This does not mean that they take their eye of the issue of standards but does mean that any idea must prove itself if is is to be sustained - the space for the teacher to generate the proof is what the school leadership can encourage and support.
Second, the teacher needs to be supported in their endeavour and the measures of impact need to be a wider than simply acquisition of knowledge. In many instances the impact is actually more about how learners are encouraged to learn than the learning itself - clarity around what outcomes could be expected from any particular innovation or idea needs to come from the teacher. Doing something because ‘it might be interesting’ is not really good enough in the modern target driven school.
Firstly a leadership team and headteacher who encourage innovation. This does not mean that they take their eye of the issue of standards but does mean that any idea must prove itself if is is to be sustained - the space for the teacher to generate the proof is what the school leadership can encourage and support.
Second, the teacher needs to be supported in their endeavour and the measures of impact need to be a wider than simply acquisition of knowledge. In many instances the impact is actually more about how learners are encouraged to learn than the learning itself - clarity around what outcomes could be expected from any particular innovation or idea needs to come from the teacher. Doing something because ‘it might be interesting’ is not really good enough in the modern target driven school.
Third is the dissemination of the impact of the particular innovation and the support given to that dissemination by senior leaders and fourth would be the much greater level of support other staff will need to adopt the approach for themselves.
I visited a school in Quebec some years ago where the head teacher had established a ‘learning innovation fund’ which teachers could bid into for funding to support an project or approach which had a direct impact on learning. Bids were evaluated and projects from the very small to the whole school were considered. Each project was supported by a member of the leadership team and once the project had run its planned course the outcomes or impact were shared with the staff during an innovation day. Those that wished to follow up ideas were given time for training and were supported by the teacher who originated the idea.
The impact could be felt as you went around the school. Teachers felt that they could contribute to the development of their school and their ideas would be given due consideration. Very few schools I know have adopted anything like this as an approach to staff development is such a systematic way as we always seem to want very short term returns.
Remember:
"If you are not willing to risk the unusual
you will have to settle for ordinary"
Jim Rohn
Learning Repositories - The future for independent learning?
0 comments Posted by Dave Thomson at 14:04
Some years ago I did some work for local schools to create a single sign-on system to allow schools to access a wide range of free and purchased e-learning content from a number of different suppliers.
The idea was to provide access to a wide range of learning resources for use at home and and at school which was always available. Interestingly some of the materials that schools bought were provided as content services covering a number of subjects.
Some months into the project I did some surveys of how the service was being used by speaking to students and teachers in some of our High schools. Pupils reported that they found some of the materials very helpful in clarifying or explaining things they had covered in class. Others said that they were able to look up other things they were interested in. Teachers were far less enthusiastic. Some said they hadn't promoted the content related to their subject as they didn't like it or it didn't explain topics in they way they wanted things explained. More worrying was the comment that they didn't want content made available for topics coming up in the future as it may 'spoil their lessons'!
What were were attempting to do was tap into the huge resource that is out on the net to support learning drawing on as many services as possible to increase the range and type of material available to young people.
The system we put together was based on the Shibboleth authentication and it worked very well - we ended up with more than 40 commercial services and some free content linked into the system but our real goal was to tap into the growing number of learning repositories around the world. Much of the work being done is focussed on university level students but a number of repositories also explore and index content for school age children.
One of the first we looked at was the Merlot repository which contains a large number of peer reviews materials including simulations, presentations, text materials and apps for mobile devices. Merlot allows integration with other search systems and the aim was to develop the search side of the system to allow pupils and teachers to access the materials they needed to support their learning or to use in their teaching. The potential is huge and the number of repositories has grown over the years, some specifically aimed at the younger students. A visit to any one of these repositories is well worth it - spend a little while there rather than dipping in - go to iTunes U and take a look at the awesome materials that are available there - again well worth an hour or two of your time.
So why is it that we are not all accessing learning where and when we need it? - why is it that these fabulous materials are not used across the world to support teaching and learning on a daily basis? How come that when you speak to almost any teacher they have never heard of them?
There are probably too many reasons to list but for me the main ones are:
1. Teachers are fixed in the way they work and teach - many do innovate but the critical mass of innovators in any particular school to change to way we learn and teach has not been reached. If something takes a bit more effort to do than their existing ways of doing things it tends not to be adopted.
2. Content is still difficult to locate and it means that teachers have to search for just the resource they regard as 'valuable' before they build it into their teaching. There is no common standard for indexing materials so you have to navigate each repository rather than being able aggregate many of them and carry out a single search.
3. Authentication into some of these services is not easy to automate so you end up registering with multiple sites and that involved too much fiddling about to get at the resources you need
4. Peer review is powerful, in that it establishes a 'value' placed on the resource by other practitioners. Trouble is there is no standard and no real match between the teaching you may do as a teacher and the reviewers
There are others but the potential is huge and the quality and range of resources is impressive and all given away free by educators. Once we have cracked the indexing, searching and access issues, the opportunities for personalised and independent learning would expand rapidly. Teachers would have access to a wealth of materials to promote the learning of their subject and students would have control of their learning. Institutions and formal learning would still be a key component of education systems around the world - I'm not a de-schooler, but the focus could become more individualised and to a degree paced for each learner.
It may be a vision for the future we never achieve but having a direction of travel is important and there are many that share the vision and are working hard to achieve it.
There has been a tremendous amount of discussion world wide about some of the potential risks for young people online and plenty of dreadful stories where vulnerable young people have committed suicide, engaged in terrorist related activity or have been targeted by paedophiles. There is also a tremendous amount about the potential of the internet to support learning or even raise educational attainment although the latter is the subject of much debate. (OECD Report 2015)
Whatever the positive and negatives there are about being online it is clear that the world is not suddenly going to change - young people spend a lot of time online; its not easy to find youngsters without a mobile phone in their hand even when they are not actually making a call or sending a text. We are in a 'just in case' scenario these days - having to have the phone handy 'just in case' some critical (or trivial) bit of information arrives.
Schools have largely led the way regarding internet safety education or information literacy and some have striven to support parents and families though training sessions, e-safety days or other information hosted on the school web site. Mobile phone companies in the UK now restrict access to certain types of sites unless you can prove you are over 18 by holding a credit card. There are also bills going through the UK parliament to try to address some of the issues arising from a largely uncontrolled and ungoverned internet. (UK Online Safety Bill 2015-16)
There are some enlightened schools that have tried a different tack. I once visited a school in Quebec, Canada and discovered that they did not filter internet traffic as many schools do. the approach was to create an online experience much the same as they had at home so there was the potential for all sorts of unsavoury material appearing on web browsers etc. The school worked with its parents on the policy and the behaviours that were encouraged at school where adopted int he home. This is an approach I have never seen anywhere else. Most UK schools filter content in a highly controlled way and as a result create a safe but unrealistic experience for young people.
Such school/parental partnerships as the school in Quebec are rare and in the majority of cases the unguarded spaces are in the home. There have been numerous reports of children online in their bedroom and parents have no idea what they are doing.
Some parents use free filtering products such as K9 Web Protection or other such filter products which allow control of access on a single computer - some also have reporting back to parents.
An alternative to filtering is monitoring. Here the idea is to allow things to be viewed or to allow interaction but to know what is going on. This takes more effort but is potentially much more rewarding as it allows for discussion and debate about appropriate behaviours, the risks and how to deal with them.
Many schools have monitoring systems in place although I get the feeling that it is used as an adjunct to filtering rather than as a educative tool.
Norton Family is a product that encourages discussion within the family about the use of the internet and it allows for those agreed policies to be monitored and reported on. Everyone should ideally be involved in setting up the house rules which then governs how the internet is monitored and what is reported. The great thing is that it also works on mobile devices and tablets. It also reports if the monitor has been disabled or switched off. Norman have summerized the functions in this video - well worth considering and the basic service is free to use with paid for add-ons if they are needed.
Note: I have no connection with Symantic or this service and gain no
benefit in any way from mentioning it.
Whatever happens to the internet over the coming years it is clear that it will become more and more intertwined with our lives and educating our children on the risks and ways to stay safe are vital. That said we need families to become more net aware and parents to take more interest in what their children are doing online - its more about share not scare i.e. making the internet part of a balanced family life rather than trying to scare our kids away from it.
Many years ago now I was fortunate to visit the Alan November conference in Boston and enjoyed a few days with like minded people who thought there was something still not quite right about the education systems on most Western Countries. It may well be that this view is more widely spread but those at the conference were predominantly from the USA, Europe and other western democracies.
The world has changed a lot since that visit but many education systems, certainly in the UK, appear to have gone backwards. A few years ago the UK was regarded as one of the leading countries exploring the potential of technology to transform learning, that is certainly not the view now. Other countries are pushing ahead, exploring new approaches and recognising that young people are in a very different world from the one that saw the introduction of mass education.
In 2007 I spoke to two university professors attending an event in the locality and my first question was whether we were turning out the sort of students that their research programmes required - the immediate answer was 'no'.
In this insightful video Alan revisits his main argument, that we need to radically rethink our approach to education in a technological age. He rightly comments on the fact that training a teacher to use technology is only the tip of the iceberg and that shifting the focus of control in the classroom to become more learner centric is a much greater challenge.
It is certainly true that for some students school is an ideal experience, but for many they do not flourish and develop their potential until they move out into college, university or work. We all know of children in Primary schools that suddenly lose their enthusiasm for learning when they move into the high school. Some schools do make major efforts to create the sort of learning environment in which individuals flourish but I have yet to see very many classrooms, let alone schools, where technology is used to stimulate, engage and aid collaboration and communication. There are bits of these in a lot of schools and usually where specific teachers have a vision for using technology ineffective and engaging ways.The trouble in many such schools is that once a creative and innovative teacher leaves then the innovation they brought in often withers and dies.
Alan might be fighting a cause that can never be won but it is a battle worth fighting.
Alan might be fighting a cause that can never be won but it is a battle worth fighting.
While it has been relatively easy to find schools that have used the odd open source software package such as Open Office or Seashore it has been far more difficult to find a school that has gone much further and are using OSS tools for admin, pupil management and within the curriculum.
The old arguments always seem come up - 'its not industry standard' or 'it may be free but it is costly to support' or 'we have had a look at using open source but staff and parental pressure has made it impossible to change'.
Many of the arguments put forward for adopting OSS solutions are financial ones. The fact that the software is free to use could save a school or college significant sums of money which could be used for other things.
There have also been a number of reports generated by various education organisations and governments seeking to explore the use of Open Source Software for Education. In the UK an organisation called BECTa (British Educational Communication and Technology Agency - now closed down) undertook an in depth research study on the potential use of OSS software. Their report entitled:
'Open source software in schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs'
set out to explore the cost benefit of using OSS and demonstrated that savings could be made but that there were issues about the lack of curriculum specific software (something that was prevalent at the time in the UK with software to help deliver the National Curriculum). The report indicated that the take up of OSS solutions were affected by the perceptions of staff and that training issues might mean that it would be timely and expensive to move staff from one approach to a more OSS rich set or resources. Administrative staff were reported to be lukewarm about the use of OSS due to its inability to integrate or inter operate with already existing systems.
'Open source software in schools: A study of the spectrum of use and related ICT infrastructure costs'
set out to explore the cost benefit of using OSS and demonstrated that savings could be made but that there were issues about the lack of curriculum specific software (something that was prevalent at the time in the UK with software to help deliver the National Curriculum). The report indicated that the take up of OSS solutions were affected by the perceptions of staff and that training issues might mean that it would be timely and expensive to move staff from one approach to a more OSS rich set or resources. Administrative staff were reported to be lukewarm about the use of OSS due to its inability to integrate or inter operate with already existing systems.
Looking elsewhere in the world a typical example of the type of research is the paper published in International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT), 2013, Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 64-84 which was written by researchers in South Africa looking at the potential of OSS in Western Cape Schools. In this report the same issues emerge, integration or compatibility with other systems is seen as a barrier as does training of staff.
In both reports the pre-existing situation had a much greater impact than any the actual quality or effectiveness of OSS solutions. the barriers seem to be more about integrating with existing products or services or the effort needed to re-train or try a different approach.
In my search for a school that has gone further than most with open source software I discovered Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand and their decision to explore the full potential for OS in schools was driven by an educational vision and not by a financial argument. Albany's WikiEducator pages make interesting reading and they set out five key educational arguments for their approach with Open Source Tools. The page also lists the tools they use, which includes some that have been put together by students for use within the school.
In my search for a school that has gone further than most with open source software I discovered Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand and their decision to explore the full potential for OS in schools was driven by an educational vision and not by a financial argument. Albany's WikiEducator pages make interesting reading and they set out five key educational arguments for their approach with Open Source Tools. The page also lists the tools they use, which includes some that have been put together by students for use within the school.
Hamish Chalmers is Deputy Principal at Albany Senior High School now responsible for the continued development of their OSS approach building on work done by a former colleague who has now moved on to another post. The fact that the use of OSS continues at Albany pays tribute to the fact that its use has now become embedded in the school and unlike many projects I have witnessed elsewhere disappears when the person who began it is no longer around.
Hamish kindly agreed to speak to me via Skype about their approach and some of the issues that have encountered along their developmental journey with OSS.
In the UK we have spent a lot of money over the years creating a high speed infrastructure for schools. Many schools have fast internet connections but I wonder just how many of them are working to establish what might be called an infrastructure for learning. What does this mean?....
There are probably many different models for communicating and collaborating with learners as well as a wide range of services that
can be used to support the learning process.
The VLE or Learning Platform is one such infrastructure built as they are from a number of different tools but if they are only used for providing another means of delivering work then I am pretty sure they will not be as effective as one might think.
There are other infrastructure models or additional tools than could be brought into the VLE to expand the options for engaging young people particularly where young people have access to a mobile device.
An example would be Calibre - an ebook management system which has its own server so you could use it to distribute coursework books (text books) in a completely new way. On mobile devices this works great with the Stanza e-book reader and is simple to set up.
There are also tools such as Jisko which is a private microblogging system similar to Twitter but which provides a means of using such tools in a controlled and safe way (internet safety is a high profile issue in the UK). Add to this the potential of mobile phones used as response devices using tools such as GiEFal which is a little away from an out of the box product but demonstrates a direction of travel for the use of mobile tools for learning.
We have a long way to go with really making effective use of ICT in learning and we need to move away from what devices we use or what bandwidth we have onto what learning infrastructures we need to create to make best use of them.
This said the critical thing with all of these infrastructures is that they need good and imaginative educators to make them really work. Setting the challenges for harnessing such opportunities for learning is the real challenge but at least these and other tools allows educators to explore ideas and perhaps transform the learning experience.
Is a device like an IPod Touch sufficient
as a 'use anytime' device?
Having worked with schools, learners and teachers for a number of years I am increasingly convinced that a single technology device is just not enough! Various surveys have been done about the use of technology by learners at home and at school as well as attitudes towards technology across the age range.
Some of the more recent research makes interesting reading such as the recent 2009 e-Maturity Study produced by some of the leading researchers in the UK.
What the research like this does not do is to study the actual use of technology by young people and teachers and what the minimum technology they would need to meet their immediate needs. Having observed a large number of lessons where ICT is used it is clear that many do not require the power provided in the majority of the hardware devices that are actually used. Teachers may use their devices to create materials for classroom use but during lessons the technology is mainly used for presentation purposes. Pupils use of technology varies depending on what they are doing but again in the majority of cases the devices are not used for creating content.
It may be that we are all waiting for the right technology to come along e.g suitable sized keyboard, long battery life (longer than a school day) high quality screen etc etc but in fact maybe all you need to be able to do is take notes, perhaps snap a picture and access information. The more heavy weight uses such as creating presentations, editing movies or creating publications need more processing power.
My contention is that we need a ' use anytime' device that is used mainly for the less sophisticated but important tasks such as the researching, note taking and watching with additional resources available 'when needed' to do the more demanding tasks.
There is much discussion about Transforming Education but what does this mean and how can you transform something that in many countries is driven by achieving specific outcomes. We all know that we need our schools to deliver citizens ready for work in the 21st Century but what does that actually mean when the measures we have for success are largely the ones that we have used for hundreds of years.
If you spend any time trying to find a definition of 'Transformation' as it applies to education then you won't find anything definitive. there are lots of people and organisations that state they are engaged in transformational change but very little to describe what that fundamentally means. Let us look at what we know:
- Young people now engage in a wide range of activities some of which were not available only a few years ago. Much of this activity is connected with communication, either through their mobile phone or via the various communities they join online.
- There are some young people who have no interest in technology and although most will have a mobile phone they may well not take part in any online collaboration.
- The curriculum in many schools remains as it was ten or more years ago. In the UK we are exploring new structures for learning through such things as diplomas which will require collaboration between institutions but the bulk of the curriculum is still focused on traditional models
- Quite a lot of the technology kids will use outside school will not be allowed in many schools
- Kids like to collaborate and be creative.
- Technology will continue to develop and will do so based on what the market requires - much of the market are young people
The outcome of the above is that we are creating two worlds; one which is the formal world of school and the other is the personal space surrounding the learner. Of course there is already overlap between these two but the impact of technology is pushing the world of the personal
space further away from the formal world of school.
In my view transformation, in part, must be greater inclusion of the informal personal space within the formal education space. How you do that and to what extent is the real challenge.
Professor Sugata Mitra is an advocate of allowing children to use their innate abilities to learn through the use of technology and learning in groups. He is currently Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, UK.
His now famous Hole in the Wall experiment was the inspiration for the Indian author Vikas Swarup to write his first novel which was then to become the movie Slumdog Millionaire!
The hole in the wall experiment involved placing a computer kiosk in the wall of an Indian slum in Dehli to observe how children would use it. The experiment was established to prove that children could learn how to use computers without any formal training. The experiment has since been repeated at many places in India, Cambodia, Africa and within the UK with amazing results.
The HIWEL (Hole In the Wall Education Ltd) team have undertaken both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the various experiments covering a range of measures such as Academic performance and Peer to Peer Learning Patterns.
What this might say about the education of children in developed countries is both interesting and challenging as Professor Mitra says that his findings are not restricted poor families in other countries but for any child which could be said to be 'remote'. He suggests that the word 'remote' could apply to children in rural locations or in cities anywhere in the world.
If children can work collaboratively to solve shared problems using technology to support their learning and they appear to do this more effectively than would otherwise be the case then why do we need teachers?
What Professor Mitra is saying does not actually remove teachers but it does change their role and it raises important questions about our approach to teaching and learning, particularly for very young children and opportunities they have for working with technology in groups.
Professor Mitra suggest that what we tend to find in the West is lots of children with computers of their own, working on their own and not in groups. Schools could well pick up some of his ideas and focus on creating opportunities for what he terms 'Minimal Invasive Education. He is also clear that working on their own is significantly less effective that working together.
Interesting to consider whether the collaboration always needs to be working together on the same machine rather than working in online communities.
Interesting to consider whether the collaboration always needs to be working together on the same machine rather than working in online communities.
Marc Prensky has spoken to audiences around the world. He is passionate about giving kids the best possible chances in life and as an educator wants to see our approach to education change to better suit the needs of the 21st Century.
Marc was a keynote speaker at the Worcestershire Learning Technologies Conference in the UK and in this podcast I discuss with his views on building schools of the future.
As a passionate advocate for preparing learners for an ever changing world Marc challenges us all to consider how best we can prepare learners for the 21st Century. He is interested in the challenges we face as educators and how the education process needs to change to accommodate new technologies and the opportunities that they offer.
Almost unique to Marc's presentation technique is his effort to connect with learners in front of an audience of educators. A group of young people ranging from 11 to 17 joined Marc to answer some of his questions about their experience of school. Marc discussed with the group their thoughts about schooling, their use of technology and their hopes for the future. The students were well able to express their views and made it very clear that listening to young people is an essential activity for teachers and school leaders if they are to develop an education process that will meet the needs of every student.
In this Podcast Marc's views on learning and the opinions of the learners combine to give some valuable insights into how we need to rethink our learning spaces. The discussions also tell us that educators have a superb resource to draw on when thinking about the School of the Future - their students.
Dr Ken Robinson is a leading force in the development of creativity and in this video he expounds on the issue of creativity and the education system and his view that the education system may well drive out the skills that we will come to depend on in the future. His wit and engaging approach is used with skill to draw you in while he weaves a compelling argument to challenge our current approach in formal education. He promotes his strongly held views that creativity needs to be nurtured and not undermined by the education system.
In a previous post on this blog I described the work of Daniel Pink and his arguments regarding the way our education system seems to give preference to developing left brain thinking! Dan Pink claimed that the more creative right sided thinking was being stifled in the traditional education system as it does not recognise, value or develop creativity. The argument is well known in education systems that seem to value measuring outcomes in terms of Maths and English SAT results or other forms of formal tests.
In the US, as in the UK, SATS scores and examination results are THE measure and all else seems to fade into insignificance. The name given to the US programme is 'No Child Left Behind', aiming to secure standards for all children by relentlessly focusing on standards of mathematics and literacy - many educators are concerned of what they claim is the bias toward SAT scores and not the equally important development of creativity. Maybe that is why some that I met in Boston in 2007 referred to this programme as 'No Child Left Alive'!
Dave Seddon is headteacher of Baxter College in the Kidderminster area of Worcestershire, UK. When he arrived at the school he faced a huge challenge with a school that was deemed to be failing, had falling student numbers and was in an ageing building that seemed well matched to the then aspiration of the school.
He has turned the school around in a remarkably short time and won the Public Servants of the Year Award in 2006 for his achievement. Dave has very strongly held views about the creation and sustainability of effective learning environments and he set these out in a Powerpoint presentation he made which is now posted on the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust website. The presentation makes clear Dave's' determination to make a difference to the lives of the young people in his care and shows just what an impact he and his new revitalised team has made.
The educational turnaround has been made of of many components, together combining to have a powerful effect on the school. Among the mix of issues was the nature of the building and his efforts to make changes to better reflect the atmosphere and culture to more closely fit with his own vision for the school.
I spoke to Dave about the work he has been doing and some of the challenges he faced and still faces and a podcast of part of our conversation is with this post.
Addition: Dave Seddon was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the Queen in her 2013 Birthday Honours list for services to Education.
Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough UK was one of the buildings created to demonstrate an entirely new approach to the design of schools as part of the UK's Building Schools for the Future programme. The design, brainchild of the well known designer Norman Foster, is certainly nothing like any school I have been to before. The Foster and Partners business has been responsible for some of the most celebrated designs world wide.
The Academy is actually an amalgam of three previous schools to create a school of over 2000 students aged 11 to 18. I visited the school during a typical school day the fact that 2000 pupils were are work there was pretty difficult to believe as the place was not overcrowded, nor were corridors overflowing with the rush of bodies between lessons. First Myth exploded for me was that a school has to look like the schools we all attended.
As with any design there were issues that could have been addressed slightly differently e.g that classrooms were a little smaller than you night ideally want, but they were bright inviting places geared to focused work. Very few straight walls in the design which is often frowned on by teachers as not being suitable for standard classroom use - but these are not standard classrooms with fill glass walls on the interior making classroom activity visible to anyone passing. Two further myths exploded for me were that you have to have rectangular rooms and that working in classrooms that are open for all peer into.
Again this might put some people off claiming that students would be distracted by things going on outside the classroom. I was pretty impressed to see a group of students sitting chatting and laughing outside one of the classrooms sitting on a settee with students inside the room not taking a jot of notice - the novelty had obviously long worn off.
Another exploded myth is that they use thin client systems throughout the school, 1,100 terminals for a school population of 2,200 students! The technical team reported that they were reliable - suffered from some glitches as with any system and had been delivering everything that the students and teachers wanted. There are some fat clients for use with CAD/CAM or some other specific curriculum tasks but everything else is delivered through thin clients.
The concept of floors seems to vanish as although there are levels there are also structures that defy the normal idea of floors - the library is built above the dual lecture theatre but that is buried into the ground so the layout looks very different from what you would normally expect.
All in all the school opens a whole new set of ideas around the notion of what a school should look like - not surprisingly the students seem to love it.
Libraries have been important places for the sharing of text based materials for centuries. There are many famous libraries across the world holding some of the most amazing resources. Trouble is that many of these resources were only available to researchers or academics until the arrival of digital technologies.
In schools the library has also seen changes with the arrival of digital resources with many more school libraries now equipped with computers so that users can carry out research using the web as well as other resources held by the library. In some schools this combination of technology and traditional printed material has been merged to create the Resource Centre or the Media Lab.
The change in use of school libraries has been interesting. Schools now tend not to spend money on expensive resources such as encyclopedia when they can access up to date and low cost resources that do the same job online. The non-fiction resource has become the internet which has allowed some schools to report that they have been able to expand their range of fiction materials and stimulate an increase in reading for pleasure.
So are libraries of the future only places where the balance between the non-fiction and fiction materials will shift further to become more and more digital? If this is the case why bother with a physical space? If it has social aspects (not something I tend to see in libraries) then is not the social networking provided by digital technologies far more powerful than could be achieved simply by meeting in a physical space called a library? Maybe libraries are gradually going to shrink to become the repository for the rare original artifact that you can go and visit....... We need to think more about the function and role of libraries in schools - what sots of things should be available in these places and just what will they mean to the generation that is growing up as avid web users and who often report that they feel agitated when not connected!
This video clip explores some interesting ideas about the potential of the lib. Interesting that the library of the future is a physical space and that there are actually books there - also interesting that it does not look like any library that I have visited..... yet!
What do we mean by quality indicators when thinking about building a new school.
The following information was provided as part of the UK's BECTa Agency work for UK government. Becta was disbanded in 2010. The links below have been updated to archive copies of materials which are still perfectly valid documents
Do we ask about the quality of the school fabric? - what materials have been used etc or are we more concerned about the impact of the design on the people who work there? Designing a new school is fraught with difficulty - the people who work in our schools only encounter a few school buildings in their career and will not have considered or have been exposed to what might be possible. No wonder that they tend to design better versions of what they are used to. Learners are almost never consulted on what they would like to see in a school design and those that are often feel that their views are not really taken seriously. This is not true in all cases but I have come across very few examples of designs that have been influenced to any real degree by learners.
Very often when you ask what is required in a new school design teachers and other stakeholder don't really know or they simply point out the things that they don't like about their current school. This is hardly the basis for establishing the design for a school of the future.
BECTa, the UK government agency for ICT has come up with a novel way of stimulating discussion between students, teachers, governors and others about the role of ICT in a school of the future. BECTa developed a set of ICT Quality Indicators (DQI's) on behalf of the government to encourage a better understanding of what we should strive for in the UK education system.
The original documents can be obtained from the links below:
Very often when you ask what is required in a new school design teachers and other stakeholder don't really know or they simply point out the things that they don't like about their current school. This is hardly the basis for establishing the design for a school of the future.
BECTa, the UK government agency for ICT has come up with a novel way of stimulating discussion between students, teachers, governors and others about the role of ICT in a school of the future. BECTa developed a set of ICT Quality Indicators (DQI's) on behalf of the government to encourage a better understanding of what we should strive for in the UK education system.
The original documents can be obtained from the links below:
- Word [http://localauthorities.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/ICT_quality_indicators.doc]
- PDF [http://localauthorities.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/ICT_quality_indicators.pdf
The statements in the ICT QI framework relate to one of three sections:
Impact: ICT can make a building a worthwhile place in which to work and learn. It can make an impact on learning and teaching.
Build Quality: ICT performance, scalability, environmental considerations, sustainability and adaptability.
Functionality: meeting the demands of any users and integrating different devices.
BECTa have developed an online tool called 'DesignMyICT' (Now unavailable) to help draw together the perspectives of various stakeholders and stimulate discussion about just what would need to be done so that a school could make the most of their available technology. The tool is free to use once you have registered and it is then possible to add stakeholders with differing perspectives, manage their interaction with the quality indicators and collect trends and accumulate profiles of opinion.
Impact: ICT can make a building a worthwhile place in which to work and learn. It can make an impact on learning and teaching.
Build Quality: ICT performance, scalability, environmental considerations, sustainability and adaptability.
Functionality: meeting the demands of any users and integrating different devices.
BECTa have developed an online tool called 'DesignMyICT' (Now unavailable) to help draw together the perspectives of various stakeholders and stimulate discussion about just what would need to be done so that a school could make the most of their available technology. The tool is free to use once you have registered and it is then possible to add stakeholders with differing perspectives, manage their interaction with the quality indicators and collect trends and accumulate profiles of opinion.
There are loads of examples of innovative design on web site, in magazines and presentations - how did those come into being? In the majority of cases where good design can be identified the designers and architects have spent time working with the owners or users of a building to convert their vision into reality.
The fact that there are so many bad designs around would suggest that something has gone badly wrong in such cases. In the case of schools might this be because the users are used to their current buildings and can only envisage a better version or that the designers and architects are unable to convert the requirements into suitable designs? Not sure- but whatever the reason there is a desperate need to spend a long time thinking about alternatives and testing our existing thinking around school design before any real planning begins.
The fact that so many kids are not turned on to schools would suggest that what has become the 'standard' school designs are no longer fit for purpose. As an aid to thinking the issues through there is a useful resource at the School Design Research Studio by one Jeffery A. Lackney from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has produced a paper entitled 33 Principles of Educational Design. The paper provides some real food for thought when considering the design of any new school.
If these principles should contribute to the creation of a vision for new accommodation or be a stimulus to thinking about what outcomes are required for any building programme then perhaps these slides illustrate the results of such thinking.
Students in the UK are tracked in their performance in English, Maths and Science from KS2 (age 11) through to KS4 (age 16).
The socio-ecomomic circumstances of each and every student is known based on a number of data indicators that provide an effectve tool to make accurate predictions of outcomes at KS4. This data is used by schools to target pupils whose prior attainment data indicates that they should be performing above their actual performance in an effort to ensure that they achieve their potential.
The graph above shows the outomes at the end of KS4 based on a large population of 14 to 19 year olds where it was possible to map individual data from KS2 to KS4 who were able to interact and collaborate online but where the degree of teacher interaction was very low. The graph shows the data divided into four quartiles based on their predicted outcomes and mapped to their level of activity online. The plot shows the difference in performance in the four quartiles for students who were active online and those that were not.
The outcomes are interesting as they indicate that for each group the students who were active online out-perform those that were not active. Further analysis also shows that these outcomes is nothing to do with the active uses being the more able students. Other analysis shows that the outcomes are not dependent on the level of teacher activity.
What would appear to be the case here is that allowing students to collaborate and communicate freely (subject to ensurance of adherance to an acceptable use policy) may well provide a dynamic that is difficult to create in any other way. The potential of online communities harnessed for the benefits of learning would seem to be of significant importance based on these findings.
While such analysis cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between online collaboration and outcomes it does show a strong correlation and one worthy of further investigation.
You don't need to leave it to expensive design companies to begin to visualise your school design ideas as now you can use Google Sketchup to explore the ideas for yourself - if you have the time that is!
With so many new school designs ending up with updated versions of what existed before maybe tools such as Sketchup provides an ideal opportunity for those involved to consider all sorts of alternative design ideas.
Google now hosts a School 2.0 Design collection of 3D models and there is an open invitation for designers to add their own designs. If this were to take off we could see a valuable resource of ideas to consider and modify to meet a range of different needs. The current set of 13 models have all been added by Fred Bartels whose other designs using Sketchup are fascinating to explore. The design he has come up with is wacky to say the least as the school is designed in the shape of a leaf. I would guess most architects would either throw their hands up in horror or rub them together thinking what they might charge for such a building. This said, the use of software like Sketchup makes it possible to explore ideas, discuss the use of space and how the association between different subjects may be incorporated into the designs.
The 13 models developed by Fred can be found a the The Google 3D Warehouse of School 2.0 Designs and the Sketchup software is free to download.
It would be good to think that students and their teachers might become involved in a dynamic dialogue about the school of the future - hopefully before the steamroller of a formal design activity involving the private sector begins.
With so many new school designs ending up with updated versions of what existed before maybe tools such as Sketchup provides an ideal opportunity for those involved to consider all sorts of alternative design ideas.
Google now hosts a School 2.0 Design collection of 3D models and there is an open invitation for designers to add their own designs. If this were to take off we could see a valuable resource of ideas to consider and modify to meet a range of different needs. The current set of 13 models have all been added by Fred Bartels whose other designs using Sketchup are fascinating to explore. The design he has come up with is wacky to say the least as the school is designed in the shape of a leaf. I would guess most architects would either throw their hands up in horror or rub them together thinking what they might charge for such a building. This said, the use of software like Sketchup makes it possible to explore ideas, discuss the use of space and how the association between different subjects may be incorporated into the designs.
The 13 models developed by Fred can be found a the The Google 3D Warehouse of School 2.0 Designs and the Sketchup software is free to download.
It would be good to think that students and their teachers might become involved in a dynamic dialogue about the school of the future - hopefully before the steamroller of a formal design activity involving the private sector begins.
There are a number of fundamental questions that tax anyone trying to formulate the ideal learning space whether that be physical or virtual. The question takes us right back to fundamental issues around teaching and learning.
If we assume learning takes place all of the time and is as a result of learners of any age interacting with something, i.e. a book, a person, a web site etc then where does teaching come into play and where not? It is pretty evident that unmediated learning can be a risky thing e.g. do a search on Google for endangered Octopus (as you might doing research into endangered species) and you end up with a spoof site all about the North American Tree Octopus!
Put a large enough group of learners online and allow them to collaborate, challenge and correct each others understanding and you have a community dynamic where, for some learners, the interaction with more knowledgeable peers is actually more effective than the encounter with a teacher.
No doubt teachers are critical to the mediation role within the learning process and we often turn to teachers for specific training or the acquisition of knowledge but in the case of the standard classroom in schools the extent to which these hard pressed people can provide a personalised curriculum for all their students is a tall order.
What we would appear to need then is a mix of opportunities for learning. the teacher and the class, the collaborative community, the learning resources and the vision by leaders to recognise this mix and explore how best to establish the new ways of working that are required.
With the advent of learning platforms there is a risk that we will simply replicate the traditional classroom online without harnessing the potential of the collaborative extended community to best effect. We may concentrate on using such systems as they were originally designed to be used i.e as course delivery systems and yet we know that there is the potential for so much more. Comments from a researcher at Lancaster university suggested that schools may actually need more than one online learning environment as the key requirements for teaching and learning may actually be different.
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